“I do think ordinariness is, in a way, the enemy, but not ordinariness as the opposite of flamboyance.”

I thought for a minute, and then I got heavy, heavy boots.

Everything I did, I did because I thought it was the correct thing to do, I am not a hero, it is true, But I am not a bad person, either.

He promised us that everything would be okay. I was a child, but I knew that everything would not be okay. That did not make my father a liar. It made him my father.

Am I such a bad person for dreaming of a world that ends when I do? I don’t mean the world ending with respect to me, but every set of eyes closing with mine.

She let out a laugh, and then she put her hand over her mouth, like she was angry at herself for forgetting her sadness.

It is not a thing that you can imagine. It only is. After that, there can be no imagining.

The French, who love their dogs, sometimes eat their horses. The Spanish, who love their horses, sometimes eat their cows. The Indians, who love their cows, sometimes eat their dogs.

Tomorrow was over the horizon, and would take an entire day to reach.

I shook my tambourine the whole time, because it helped me remember that even though I was going through different neighborhoods, I was still me.

We are not long-term beings. Not heroes of romances in many volumes. For one gesture, for one word alone, we shall make the effort. We openly admit: our creations will be temporary. We shall have this as our aim: a gesture.

Food serves two parallel purposes: it nourishes and it helps you remember. Eating and storytelling are inseparable-the saltwater is also tears; the honey not only tastes sweet, but makes us think of sweetness; the matzo is the bread of our affliction.

She was with me. She did all of those things and so many more, things I would never tell anyone, and she never even loved me. Now that’s love.

I tried the key in all the doors, even though he said he didn’t recognize it. It’s not that I didn’t trust him, becuase I did. It’s that at the end of my search I wanted to be able to say: I don’t know how I could have tried harder.

Just to be a functioning adult in the world, we develop all of these layers of protection. When we see homeless people, we don’t cry, even though homeless people probably deserve our tears – you know, it’s a horrible thing.

Memory was supposed to fill the time, but it made time a hole to be filled. Each second was two hundred yards, to be walked, crawled. You couldn’t see the next hour, it was so far in the distance. Tomorrow was over the horizon, and would take an entire day to reach.

I wasn’t having second thoughts, but I was having thoughts.

Never worry about the delay of your success compared to others, because construction of a palace takes more time than an ordinary building.

I don’t work at being ordinary.

To allow what you’re reading to pierce routines, safe and impermeable, in which ordinary carnal life is tracked, charted, channeled. Then, what of the right answers.

Take me. I’m an ordinary player in the key of C. And my will was broken by my pride and my vanity. Who’s gonna love you when you’re looks are gone? God will. Like he waters the flowers on your window sill.

You never know when some small thing will lead to a big idea.

Travel is very inspirational – but it’s in the ordinary that I find my themes of love and work and family.

Men who neglect philosophy while busying themselves with ordinary affairs are like the Suitors [in the Odyssey] who desired Penelope but went to bed with her maids.

And they are as inefficient as the sleepy dose of an ordinary sermon.